Introduction to the special issue: Reading the Fifty Shades ‘phenomenon’

Background and context

Since their release in paperback in the spring of 2012, the Fifty Shades trilogy (Fifty Shades of Grey, 2012a; Fifty Shades Darker, 2012b; Fifty Shades Freed, 2012c) by British author EL James have garnered enormous interest both in terms of sales and public debate. For the uninitiated, the trilogy explores the relationship between young, virginal, Anastasia (Ana) Steele and twenty-something billionaire Christian Grey. The novels blend a somewhat conventional romantic narrative with sexual passages that have a BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission, Sadism, Masochism) flavour.

What distinguished the novel series from other forms of erotica or romance novels, however, was their visibility. Beginning life as Master of the Universe, an online serial originally conceived as Twilight fan-fiction, ¹ the novels were then self-published as eBooks and print-on-demand through virtual publisher The Writers’ Coffee Shop. The success of this iteration led to Vintage picking up the trilogy for mass-market distribution, releasing the series worldwide through paperback and eBooks in April 2012. Unlike many other novels in the romance or erotica genre, the series was mass-marketed in supermarkets and bookshops alongside more conventionally popular publications.

The novels quickly became bestsellers, topping the New York Times bestsellers list on eBook sales alone, and, according to Amazon UK, overtaking JK Rowling in sales (Meredith, 2012). By the end of 2012, the series had sold over 65 million copies worldwide (Deahl, 2012), many of which were in eBook format, allegedly heralding a ‘revolution’ of women downloading erotic eBooks (Happe, 2012). Their success led to a range of similar titles being marketed in their wake (often emulating the famous greyscale covers of the series) including Sylvia Day's Crossfire series (2012a, 2012b, 2012c) and Vina Jackson's Eighty Days series (2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2012d, 2013). Retailers were quick to capitalize on the success of these novels, with bookshops promoting the ‘next Fifty Shades’ and adult stores using the novels as a selling point, offering Fifty Shades themed evenings and imploring people to buy the items featured in the novels in-store. Indeed, adult retailer Lovehoney released an official Fifty Shades range of merchandise including handcuffs and paddles, whilst EMI even released Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album. As with every high-profile literary phenomenon of recent years, spoof books have emerged both in eBook and paperback formats, including Fifty Shades of Beige (Mockery, 2012) and Fifty Shames of Earl Grey (Merkin and Shaffer, 2012). In addition a film is also on its way, with the internet and entertainment media full of speculation about who will play the two lead roles and just how ‘far’ the sex will go (The Week, 2013; Wilkinson, 2013).

Much of the visibility and ubiquity of the novel series can be attributed to the books’ talked-about-ness. They were debated in newspapers, magazines, chat shows, radio phone-ins, blogs, television documentaries and, very visibly, on social media. Parody and snark accounts such as @50ShedsofGrey and @myoutergoddess flooded Twitter whilst Facebook timelines filled with women declaring they were about to spend the evening ‘with Mr Grey’.

Much of this public discussion centred around the role of BDSM practices in the books, echoing the arguments made by Barker et al. (2007) that BDSM is becoming more visible in the ‘mainstream’. Discussions about the sexual nature of the books ranged from whether or not the depiction of domination and submission was a ‘good’ thing – especially for women (see Arthurs, 2012; Flood, 2012) – to whether its visibility was ‘important’ in highlighting the pleasure women get from reading erotica (Parker, 2012; M Wilkinson, 2012). In addition, much was made about the series’ origins as fan fiction, and the books were often derided for being ‘bad writing’ (Arthurs, 2012; Davis, 2012).

Our interest in the books as a phenomenon arose from our own backgrounds as academics with an interest in studying media, sexual cultures, gender, literature and audiences. We were fascinated not only by the phenomenal success of the books and the way they had been discussed in public, but also by the different questions the books and the reactions to them raised about readership, gender and sexuality.

Themes and contents

The articles presented here represent a range of responses to the series. Our contributors come from a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, literature, law, religious studies, geography, media and cultural studies. Broadly speaking, the contributions explore three significant areas of study: the texts themselves; the responses of different reader communities to these books; and the series’ relationship to wider debates about sexuality within culture. We acknowledge here a particular bias – the majority of contributors to this issue, including ourselves, live and work in the UK or the USA and we recognize that the response to the books in other cultures may differ. We would undoubtedly welcome further scholarship in these areas in order to broaden our understanding of this cultural phenomenon.

Beginning with Angelika Tsaros's article, ‘Consensual non-consent: Comparing EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey and Pauline Réage's Story of O’, the author presents a comparison of the two contemporary and classic BDSM novels. Tsaros offers an analysis of how consent, power, femininity and sexual agency operate within these novels.

In her article, ‘Flogging sexual transgression: Interrogating the costs of the “Fifty Shades effect”’, Alex Dymock discusses notions of sexual transgression and the way this can be used as a mechanism for reinforcing both capitalism and heteronormativity. Dymock argues that the Fifty Shades phenomenon is, in these regards, far more conservative than it may first appear to be.

Meg Barker's article, ‘Consent is a grey area? A comparison of understandings of consent in Fifty Shades of Grey and on the BDSM blogosphere’, looks at the issues of consent present in the narrative of Fifty Shades and how these relate to the BDSM blogosphere, whereby definitions of consent are frequently expanded beyond notions of sex.

The blogosphere is also the focus of Deborah Whitehead's article, ‘When ‘mommy blogs’ met ‘mommy porn’: Evangelical Christian and Mormon women's responses to Fifty Shades’. Here, Whitehead explores the response to the novels from evangelical Christian and Mormon ‘mommy’ bloggers, looking at how these religious women publicly debate issues of sexuality and faith and negotiate whether or not reading the novel series can be ‘compatible’ with their religious lifestyles and beliefs.

Ruth Deller and Clarissa Smith's contribution, ‘Reading the BDSM romance: Reader responses to Fifty Shades’, presents the initial findings of survey research with readers of the novels. Inspired by Janice Radway's (1984) Reading the Romance, they seek to hear the voices of readers, often excluded from the public discussion around the merits of the novel series. The article discusses how these readers have a complex, often contradictory, relationship to the material – with the novels offering complex pleasures, from the collective act of ‘mocking’ the works to sexual stimulation and romantic escapism.

The pleasures found in critical responses to the series is also the focus of Sarah Harman and Bethan Jones’ article, ‘Fifty Shades of Ghey: Snark fandom and the figure of the anti-fan’. Drawing on Jonathan Gray's concept of the anti-fan (Gray, 2003), they discuss the ways in which negative reactions to the text allow for a more nuanced reading of the series’ position in popular culture, and suggest that anti-fans draw on distinctions of taste as defined by Pierre Bourdieu (1984) to position themselves as gatekeepers and enforce specific taste cultures.

In addition to these full-length articles, we present three shorter pieces reflecting on the series in different ways. IQ Hunter's ‘Pre-reading and failing to read Fifty Shades of Grey’ discusses the experience of coming to the books as a male ‘pre-reader’, eager to defend them against their numerous critics yet struggling to understand the appeal once the act of reading commenced. Hunter discusses the roles of both masculinity and neo-liberalism in his own, and wider cultural, responses to the text.

Feona Attwood and Caroline Walters’ ‘Fifty Shades and the law: Regulating sex and sex media in the UK’ looks at the complicated relationship the law has with BDSM practices and representations, noting that in the summer of 2012, whilst the books were being bought in supermarkets, there were attempts to criminalize other representations of BDSM practices, most visibly in the ‘#porntrial’ case of R v Walsh.

Amber Martin's ‘Fifty Shades of sex shop: Sexual fantasy for sale’ explores the response of sex shops to the success of the novels. She discusses how the series has become a ‘particular brand of BDSM that is presented as female friendly, fashionable, exciting and safe as opposed to extreme, marginalized and dangerous’.

We argue that the ‘Fifty Shades phenomenon’ offers much for us to consider as scholars of sexuality, gender and culture. In bringing together this collection of articles, we hope that this special issue contributes towards the public debate about the significance of these novels and what they might ‘mean’ for the ways in which women, in particular, publicly express and discuss sexuality.